FOR THE SHORTIES: Kabir has carved a niche that few of his rap peers would be equipped to join him in.

In eighth grade, I decided that school and hip-hop should exist separately. It was spring semester, and my sexy music teacher tapped me to perform “a rap” at an Earth Day assembly. Like a pathetic horny adolescent, I obliged, not only to rap rhymes that were likely written by a 62-year-old EPA bureaucrat named Walter, but also to be dressed in her vision of what hip-hop looked like — a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses — and to strike a b-boy pose as a finale. (Or, as she put it: “Do that thing like you’re hugging yourself.”) As I walked off stage, I detoured embarrassed for ashamed and suicidal.

Real classy: Math rap not especially dirty
On the low, we were so impressed by the integrity of some Rhythm Rhyme Results tracks that we felt like losers for bumping them. Really — how many sexual partners can you entice rolling down the street blaring lines like “When you’re adding two numbers and the signs are both the same/You add the absolute values and the sign doesn’t change”? To make ourselves feel cool about enjoying educational hip-hop, we picked our favorite classroom cuts with potential sexual or drug-dealing innuendos.

TRACK | “Circumference (It Just Makes Sense)”CHOICE LYRIC | “You know that every circle whether it’s big or it’s little/Has one single point that’s right in the middle”

TRACK | “Inversion”CHOICE LYRIC | “If you have an integer put a one below/To find the multiplicative inverse you know bring the bottom number up and put the top one below”

TRACK | “Meters, Liters, and Grams”CHOICE LYRIC | The whole song

Not till my move to Boston 12 years later did I re-evaluate hip-hop’s classroom value. I’m not referring to academics who negotiate the socio-political significance of G-Unit murder anthems — I still deplore that. No, I mean the incorporation of beats, rhymes, and attitude into grade-school curricula. Educators around here teach a remarkable number of rap-inspired programs, from Boston Youth Hip-Hop Shop after-school sessions to the 4Peace Summer Arts Workshop at the Grover Cleveland Community Center in Dorchester. Even more impressive is the number of Boston rappers who daylight as educators: Jake the Snake as a classroom aide in Dorchester; Lyrical, er, Dr. Pete Plourde as a professor at Lasell College; Kabir Sen, who’s running neck-and-neck with that dude from Summer School for Coolest Teacher Ever honors.

In the field of Boston’s hip-hop educators, Kabir is the anomaly whose roles as teacher and musician are not mutually exclusive; he’s the same dude at his desk that he is on stage (minus the Hefeweizen). The son of Nobel laureate and Harvard economics professor Amartya Sen, Kabir met the mic during Boston’s underground renaissance; those who frequented Western Front battles and sweaty Middle East shows circa 2002 will recall his riding the independent wave beyond the Bean alongside cats like Mr. Lif and Esoteric. But though he still drops sporadic enlightened albums (three so far, with another on the way), Kabir has carved a niche that few of his rap peers would be equipped to join him in. (Some might even be legally prohibited.)

From ’Ye to mixtapes To get the full taste of where hip-hop is at, you also have to seek out the unofficial releases, the mixtapes, which often have a bigger impact than the official albums.

Chairmen of the boards Not unlike Swedish, Tagalog, and Esperanto, music is a language, with its own conjugations and (lewdly) dangling participles.

War of the words 50 Cent has a long history of initiating beefs before he releases a new album.

Top 10 Hyphy Videos of all time With Warner Bros. snapping up the cream of the Yay Area rap scene , TVT capitalizing on Hyphy Hitz , and even indie-rock geeks learning how to ghost ride the whip , we figured it's high time to take a quick look back at how we got here. So get your stunna shades on and get ready to go dumb: it's the top 10 hyphy videos of all time!

Bay Area beats Although Oakland’s hyphy movement got its name from a bastardization of the word “hyper,” at this point that could just as easily stand for “hype.”

Dead, or immortal? When Chuck D challenges the status quo, a bunch of fortysomethings nod their heads, but Nas can put the young rappers on the defensive.

Diversified incoming It’s a testament to the strength of hip-hop, as the medium enters its third decade, that 2006 would see such a wide range of sounds so well represented, from commercial anthems to abstract beat tapes.

Larger than life Although predictions that Jay-Z, in his comeback, would pull in the biggest sales numbers of the year were proved wrong (at 680,000, his Def Jam release Kingdom Come ranks third behind Rascal Flatts and Justin Timberlake in 2006), that’s hardly the story worth telling.

Birth of the DVDJ Much of the hype swirling around the show was that Peanut Butter Wolf was going to "scratch" DVDs, thereby inventing a whole new style of performance. Slideshow: Stones Throw Anniversary Tour at the Paradise Rock Club, November 1, 2006

JeknowwotI’msayin? “People have this kind of problem with me,” says Lady Sovereign over the phone from her London home. “They think they know me, and they don’t know me — and it’s dis gustin ’.” Lady Sovereign, "Gatheration" (mp3)

No success like failure The wild, idle guessing game over the Roots’ Game Theory and OutKast’s Idlewild is finished.

CZARFACE SOARS ABOVE THE CLOUDS | February 11, 2013 This week 7LES and Inspectah Deck drop Czarface , a full-length work of adventurous genius revolving around a metal-clad protagonist who feeds on destruction.

THE BPD ADDS INSULT TO INJURY | February 05, 2013 At times, this kind of decision makes you wonder whether the BPD is saving its best awards for officers who've been involved in the death of civilians.